> we've arrived at "innocent until accused" instead of "innocent until proven guilty"
For a platform like Twitch, this is fine. They have a brand. They’re akin to a modern television channel, and television has always been this ruthless. There are lots of other streaming sites.
I agree that twitch is within their rights. I also think we're within our rights to pressure them to adopt standards we would like. The law has long recognized different rights for "public figures" and private citizens, and I think that most Twitch users are better understood as private citizens. Even if I felt the behavior policing history of media was perfect (I do not), I think this is different in important ways.
> I also think we're within our rights to pressure them to adopt standards we would like.
I think this is what's happening, it's just that the users of Twitch want something different than what you want. You might think they're the vocal minority or something, but Twitch is almost certainly making a data driven decision here.
I am sure there are many different groups here! But yah, there are definitely folks that will be happy. I was just trying to say that, beyond Twitch being within its rights, people can still yell at them and say they shouldn't (or should) do it. No need to leave it at "this is legal and in line with previous behavior."
Sure. I find it extremely tiring to read about how this is a slippery slope, and how this is somehow oppressive or unusual for American media.
I don't mind folks coming in and saying, "Hey, this is a change that I dislike." But a lot of the discourse here today is just outrage and finger pointing and yelling about free speech absolutism.
I think that HN's downvoting system actually makes it harder to have a reasoned discourse about topics like this, because if I disagree with the prevailing opinion in this community that Twitch is doing a bad thing, it's likely my comment gets strongly downvoted, rather than opening a line of discussion.
I don't know how to solve this. Maybe separate "I disagree" vs "Off-topic/poor quality comment" downvotes?
There's a reasonable discussion to be had about the decision Twitch made. I happen to think it's a good decision, and I'd love to be able to have that discourse in a calm way, but I don't know how to have it in something like HN where comments get swept up in voting and yelling and hostile replies.
I very much agree that unmarked voting systems like HN's do a really poor job of keeping comments "high quality." Everyone has a different definition of quality.
I understand that there are UX challenges to adding different kinds of votes, but I totally agree that the UI affordances we have right now make conversation harder instead of easier.
I wonder if separating "quality" (vote + or -) from "reports" ("excessively rude", "inappropriate", "off-topic") would be useful. I do think that people can be excessively rude and useful at the same time. Edit: So, this would change from "-3 points" -> "-3 points [rude: 3, off-topic: 5]".
...I don't know, I'm a user, and uh, I hate the advertisers, and their dumb standards, they're killing creativity, only allowing brand safe content to exist, and be consumed. I think that's an overall net negative for the users. The need to make everything conform to advertisers is destroying the online spaces we congregate on, making them shallow, and vapid feeling.
>For a platform like Twitch, this is fine. They have a brand.
As someone who does not operate a streaming platform, I don't care whether they have a brand or not - I care about the pragmatic benefits of living in a society where principles like innocent-until-proven-guilty are available and practiced in a way that benefits average people like me. I think the number of people who would consider "they have a brand" to be a good justification can't be higher than the number who own major brands.
Nobody is “innocent until proven guilty”. You are either, as a matter of fact, innocent or guilty. Our constitution prohibits the government from depriving you of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. But Twitch, or I, or you, can make up our own minds about your innocence or guilt, trial or no trial, and proceed according to our rights and inclinations. That right, the freedom of association, is as important as the right to be free of penalty from the government absent due process.
Due process was invented for a reason, and that reason is that innocent people like us do not like being unjustly punished. Any entity powerful enough to deliver an unjust punishment qualifies for the reason that due process was invented.
Depends on what they did. If Twitch lets, say, the Unibomber stream video, it looks bad to advertisers (Twitch's customers). They don't want to be associated with that.
It all makes sense when you look at it from a money angle rather than an ethical angle.
They wouldn't blame Twitch for what that person did, but they would blame Twitch for continuing to host them on their site.
For example: if Twitch hosts a well-known sexual abuser and groomer who's known for taking advantage of vulnorable fans, then people will be rightfully upset with Twitch for giving them an audience.
This is why Ryan Haywood got permanently banned from Twitch. Some of his victims and many of his former fans reached out to Twitch and said "hey, this guy is an abusive and manipulative piece of shit who will take advantage of vulnerable fans if he gets the chance. Please don't provide him with a megaphone and a potential audience."
People can, and do. At any given moment you can probably find at least one hashtag campaign excoriating Twitch for having not banned some streamer for something for other.
The context is that the last six months or so have been a shitstorm of prominent streamers caught in various forms of grooming, sexual assault, and so on. Much of this has happened off-Twitch, but it's certainly affected the reputation of Twitch to be associate with such.
It's no different to the owners of M:TG banning people for serious misconduct, for example.
This does not scale. Imagine if every grocery store, doctor, and gas station decided to deny someone service because of an unproven criminal charge. Given that innocent people are charged with crimes they did not commit, the morality of denying someone for something they do not have control over is the same in this case as in cases involving protected classes.
For a platform like Twitch, this is fine. They have a brand. They’re akin to a modern television channel, and television has always been this ruthless. There are lots of other streaming sites.